Fly Mordecai, fly!

In three weeks, I spent five nights on buses, two on trains, and managed to push forward through the following itinerary before taking a 30 hour train back up to Kolkata. That list is:

Nasik-Pune-Hyderabad-Hampi-Mysore-Bangalore-Madurai-Rameswaram-Chennai.

It was a pending curiousity that needed to be dealt with god-dammit; after five months ambling around the North.

Nasik (Maharastra)

My destination en-route from Varanasi targeted to ween me off ghat-life and get me as close as I could to Mumbai without having to hit it.

Life in the tank:







Mysore (Karnataka)

Mysore's sparsely distributed population and transportation caught me at first. Ah, ah - Kolkata tricked me once - it's a strike! But in truth, no. Just a quaint historical gem, it.


Like every city in the south after it, Mysore was plastered in cinema bills. Simply: the southern side of cinema = the b-grade side of Bollywood. Hindi's got the upper-hand and the southern states their mini markets.




I intercepted the main heartthrob dressed as a cockroach, hitting his head on the cinema hall.


Cinema. Advertising. Mayhem. All the way to the flower market.

La Flower Marketia:




Nearby was the equally fragrant Mysore Mutton Market;


though it proved not to be goat carcus exclusive.


In Mysore;

I went to the Railway Museum and not to the Maharaja's Palace.


I fell in love with my hotel's neighbouring minaret.


I bought:

a) a plastic wallet with photos of Bollywood stars in its heart inlays
b) passable underwear for India
c) a book entitled "Aids to Scoustsmastership" for twenty rupees (supreme humour, for all its hyperbolic seriousness).

Then Bangalore, yar.


Bangalore (Karnataka)

Pop-talk has it sussed that Bangalore is India IT central.


But beyond MG road (the commercial nucleus of its worldwide status); the Apple store and all its party-partners weren't hanging around so much.

Through the crumbling Muslim quarter: mosques; birds going crazy from the heat of summer.


a market with Infosys umbrellas and vegetables,



cows, autos and bullocks,


worker's keepin' it up


Bollywood posters,


...then a hip street streaming with Cafe Coffee Days and somehow, a Planet M possessing Return to Cookie Mountain. A befuddling inventory error I enthusiastically jumped at, though the rat-chewed copy of Lolita I did not.


I was in Bangalore about eight hours, then it was challo to Tamil Nadu.

Hampi and the boulder brigade

This post goes like a flip book.

The oh-so-prolific Hampi, a small village surrounded by temple ruins and a landscape of eroded rock.


Also, four hours east of the vile beaches of Goa - and so a world impaled with restaurants toting pseudo-sheik paper lamps and music I'd prefer not to extrapolate on.

But bless the heat. The tourist season was ending and it was hands back to the local establishments.


I say, parading rights.


In Hampi I stayed three nights. On Day 1 I fell in love with fish-head boulder:


And proceeded to obsessively photograph it,


in sequence:


along with many of its gloriously eroded counterparts.


In solemnity.


In stances of nobility.


Merging with temple ruins.


Conclusively; fuck Stonehenge. This place was grand.


Turns out a festival was incoming and pilgrims were arriving in hoards to convert the endless rock graceland into a campground.


Two large temples on wheels were adorned progressively over the days as the Hindu wave came in, to eventually possess a glitz that was capable of Indian wedding attendance. The dexterous children were the ticket.


Though this particular girl complicating things with repetitive ladder-shaking obstacles.


As far as I could establish; the festival amounted to throwing bundles of bananas to the top window of the said temples on wheels.


The success ratio was (rather) poor. Many bananas lay strewn on the ground, no longer suitable for consumption; even by the notorious monkeys.




But there was the success story of the jovial lady who sold all her bananas:


Apparently all the banana throwing was in celebration of the marriage of Shiva and Parvarti, which I reckon has something to do with the mad marriage season taking India as of late.

Bangalore:


Chennai:


But back to the festival: this thing was a plethora of intramural activities.


Innovative ones, too.


The tentacles ropes of the temple were a feat of balance, conquered most successfully when cricket bats were utilised for stability.


The signs proclaiming that "swimming is danger" were effectively ignored.


And the Bombay mafia training programs were right thought out.


Meanwhile, the praised lingam, a few km off; was being neglected of devotional attention.


...but blessings still had their day:



It was all like a blanket of pink polka-dots that eventually lay down to dry.


And the next day it was challo so I could tend to my itinerary of what became my obsessive bullet train through the south.